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[mainiac]

He was an unquestionably terrible commander-in-chief. I would go so far as to say that Hitler's general incompetence in military matters was the largest single reason that Germany lost the war.

He was lucky which is better then being good.  If Hitler hadn't gambled wildly and won with Munich leading to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Germany would have lost the war from the get go.  If Hitler hadn't gambled wildly and won with the Sedan offensive (over the strong objections of the generals who called him incompetent), Germany would have lost the war due to the blockade around summer 1942.  Hitler was grossly incompetant for starting the war anyway but without his successful gambles, Germany wouldn't have gotten nearly so far.  Even as late as the start of January 1940 the smart money would have been on France to beat Germany.

Of course if you blame him for "starting the war in the first place", that would be a bigger deal then those lucky gambles.

So, what you're actually actually saying, is that if not for the strategic bombing, Germany wouldn't be overrun, but would manage to sue for a conditional peace?
That's still a different message than the original one.

And you're basing it on what, exactly?

If not for the strategic bombings (and those efforts not going somewhere else), Germany has planes and pilots to maintain air supremacy over the Soviet Union the whole war instead of losing it in 1943.  Germany has more then twice as much artillery (the most underrated factor for land armies in WWII) and the ammo and trucks to use it to good effect.  This is because half the German artillery efforts in the second half of the war went to fighting the strategic bombing.  Germany isn't going to keep seeing successes like it did in 1941 and 1942 because the Soviet army was as good a force as the German army by 1943; however the huge Soviet successes of 1943 and 1944 would be much smaller.  Germany would be able to keep occupying huge amounts of Soviet territory.  This means that economically, Germany is stronger then the Soviet Union and the Axis has more manpower to draw on then the Soviets.  The oil situation of Germany would be great.  Half of German oil was burned by the airforce, everything else including the army and navy is the other half.  Without the need to desperately train as many pilots as possible to try to stop the strategic bombing and without the bombing of synthetic oil plants, Germany has no oil shortages.

I think that Germany probably still loses but the victory would be hella worse.  And it would be really, really bad for the Soviets because 1946 was bad weather for the harvest.  There was a (relatively) small famine despite them releasing millions of young men from service and armaments.  If the war is still going and they dont have control of Ukraine things would not be pretty.  The Soviets wouldn't just roll over and give up but it would have been a bad time.

So I wouldn't go as far as Shonus and call it the most important factor but it was a big factor.  While the allies could match German army quality from 1943 onwards, the strategic bombing meant they could also overwhelm them with strategic resources.

Even without USSR they couldn't do sealion. Might successfully starve Britain to death though

The thing about subs is that most of the successes were against ships out of convoy.  Even if a convoy is just protected by a few corvettes it's a dangerous target for submarines and corvettes are waaaaaay cheaper then submarines.  So there is an extreme diminishing return aspect to submarines, you have fewer targets, you start losing submarines way faster as escort numbers increase and the very small pool of talented officers starts dying off.  So when you have a few dozen submarines in the ocean adding one more submarines means sinking dozens of ships but if you have a few hundred submarines in the ocean you would be lucky if adding one more submarine sinks you one more ship.

[WealthyRadish]

I was a bit unclear, I didn't mean strategic bombing in general, but rather the bombing of cities and civilians.

I remember writing a research paper a couple years ago for a basic history class in uni, about the effect strategic bombing had in WWII. I argued that the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan had done little to shorten the war (or rather very little compared to what commanders thought at the time) with a minor exception for the effect it had on German oil, and that it was more or less a waste of material and civilian lives. Since this thread's on the topic of aircraft, I'm kind of curious what you guys think about it.

I'm guessing this didn't include the two nuclear strikes on japan that brought them to surrender or at least have them that little nudge towards surrendering that they needed?

It did. At the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nobody had much of a clue about the long term effects of nuclear war, and the bombing events weren't significantly different from the ongoing firebombing campaign. Tokyo had already been firebombed early in the bombing campaign, killing around 100,000 people, as well as every other major city that could even be remotely considered relevant to Japan's war industry. Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't even militarily useful targets, and the death count and destruction wasn't much higher or lower than the deaths in other cities. I'm not saying strategic bombing wasn't a component in Japan's unconditional surrender, but if there was one major event that convinced them, it was the Soviet Union declaring war, not the atomic bombings. It's my interpretation that the role the atomic bombings had was vastly overplayed by the US government and media propaganda, at first for the standard reasons of showing off technological superiority but later as a justification after the fact for the greater strategic bombing campaign that in reality only played a minor role (it became especially convenient once the long term effects of nuclear weapons were known, and strategic bombing in general was being questioned ethically).

Or the fact that both German and Japanese production output dropped to almost nothing by late war, and what they did produce was shoddy as fuck because the working conditions were so bad and supply of power and materials was so chancy. Strategic Bombing was almost unquestionably the single most important military cause of Germany's defeat, and the second most important cause of Japan's (#1 being the submarine campaign).

It really hinges on what you mean exactly by "late war". I'm not sure about Japan, but Germany's economy and production continued to grow at above or at projected rates throughout the war, only plummeting in the final stage when everything finally collapsed (the date I remember is something like September 1944 when the German war economy began to decline). Aside from the bombing of railroads and oil related industry, the effect the bombing campaigns had on the economy was really insignificant. The proponents of it at the time were looking for a "morale victory", where by destroying enough cities and killing or displacing enough civilians Germany (and Japan) would surrender or collapse, and that simply didn't happen (or get close to happening) even at the very end. The bombers were so inaccurate that targeting industry was almost pointless, since very early in the campaigns Germany and Japan began to decentralize industry and make it harder for intelligence to distinguish it, let alone hit it, and aside from fixed installations like dams (as LW mentioned) and the carpet bombing or incendiary bombing of civilians, their success rate was abysmal.

I wouldn't say it had no effect on the war, but enjoying the hindsight we have now, the bombing of targets with no military significance (hello Dresden, goodbye Dresden) in pursuit of a victory condition that didn't happen should be something that can be considered unethical and a waste of resources. Now, the question of whether the other industrial and military targets were worth it comes down to hard numbers, and that's something I'm curious about.

Fakedit: 8 new replies, huraerrugfgh

[mainiac]

Adam Tooze has a really good discussion of the latewar "rise" of German production in Wages of Destruction.  Really, really good book.  When you include things like planes that never fly and submarines that never go in the water, you can really work miracles in your production totals.

[ChairmanPoo]

The single biggest military, diplomatic and economical factor for Germany defeat in WW2 was Hitler and his decisions. Stuff like "strategic bombings" are just an extension of Hitler's idiocy biting him in his ass.

Starting the war in the first place was probably the biggest factor. When you declare war on the entire rest of the world combined chances are you're fucked, it's just a matter of when.

He was an unquestionably terrible commander-in-chief. I would go so far as to say that Hitler's general incompetence in military matters was the largest single reason that Germany lost the war.

Not actually true

Relevant link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinPbUZUHDE

For the too long, didn't watch crowd: Hitler was following his general's advice more often than not. And when he didn't he wasn't necessarily the one in the wrong, either. Even more damning, most of the nazi high command and generals were all into the more harebrained strategies. But after the war they changed their song in a most convenient manner, by saying everything that had gone wrong in their campaigns was their dead boss' fault. 

TL'DR: wehrmacht generals purposedly spread this myth of everything going wrong because of Hitler's meddling in order to conceal their own mistakes and collaboration with the regime.

[Lord Shonus]

I was a bit unclear, I didn't mean strategic bombing in general, but rather the bombing of cities and civilians.

I remember writing a research paper a couple years ago for a basic history class in uni, about the effect strategic bombing had in WWII. I argued that the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan had done little to shorten the war (or rather very little compared to what commanders thought at the time) with a minor exception for the effect it had on German oil, and that it was more or less a waste of material and civilian lives. Since this thread's on the topic of aircraft, I'm kind of curious what you guys think about it.

I'm guessing this didn't include the two nuclear strikes on japan that brought them to surrender or at least have them that little nudge towards surrendering that they needed?

It did. At the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nobody had much of a clue about the long term effects of nuclear war, and the bombing events weren't significantly different from the ongoing firebombing campaign. Tokyo had already been firebombed early in the bombing campaign, killing around 100,000 people, as well as every other major city that could even be remotely considered relevant to Japan's war industry. Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't even militarily useful targets, and the death count and destruction wasn't much higher or lower than the deaths in other cities. I'm not saying strategic bombing wasn't a component in Japan's unconditional surrender, but if there was one major event that convinced them, it was the Soviet Union declaring war, not the atomic bombings. It's my interpretation that the role the atomic bombings had was vastly overplayed by the US government and media propaganda, at first for the standard reasons of showing off technological superiority but later as a justification after the fact for the greater strategic bombing campaign that in reality only played a minor role (it became especially convenient once the long term effects of nuclear weapons were known, and strategic bombing in general was being questioned ethically).

Or the fact that both German and Japanese production output dropped to almost nothing by late war, and what they did produce was shoddy as fuck because the working conditions were so bad and supply of power and materials was so chancy. Strategic Bombing was almost unquestionably the single most important military cause of Germany's defeat, and the second most important cause of Japan's (#1 being the submarine campaign).

It really hinges on what you mean exactly by "late war". I'm not sure about Japan, but Germany's economy and production continued to grow at above or at projected rates throughout the war, only plummeting in the final stage when everything finally collapsed (the date I remember is something like September 1944 when the German war economy began to decline). Aside from the bombing of railroads and oil related industry, the effect the bombing campaigns had on the economy was really insignificant. The proponents of it at the time were looking for a "morale victory", where by destroying enough cities and killing or displacing enough civilians Germany (and Japan) would surrender or collapse, and that simply didn't happen (or get close to happening) even at the very end. The bombers were so inaccurate that targeting industry was almost pointless, since very early in the campaigns Germany and Japan began to decentralize industry and make it harder for intelligence to distinguish it, let alone hit it, and aside from fixed installations like dams (as LW mentioned) and the carpet bombing or incendiary bombing of civilians, their success rate was abysmal.

I wouldn't say it had no effect on the war, but enjoying the hindsight we have now, the bombing of targets with no military significance (hello Dresden, goodbye Dresden) in pursuit of a victory condition that didn't happen should be something that can be considered unethical and a waste of resources. Now, the question of whether the other industrial and military targets were worth it comes down to hard numbers, and that's something I'm curious about.

Fakedit: 8 new replies, huraerrugfgh

Here's where you're wrong. Terror bombing was almost entirely a myth - not a single bomb was dropped by an Allied bomber (and few if any from an Axis one) with the intention of causing victory through panic. Every single one was aimed at a factory, a military target, or a transportation network. Dresden was not only one of the key remaining industrial centers, it was THE supply and transit nexus for the forces defending the Soviet invasion route, and it was obliterated in an attempt to "plow the road" for the Soviets. The reason Japan's cities were firebombed (instead of the precision-for-the-era raids the US tried so hard to pull off in Europe) was because every Japanese home contained some sort of machine tool, and such decentralized production made up the majority of the Japanese industry. Similarly, Britain resorted to area firebombing not out of any attempt to break the enemy morale (nobody who lived through the Blitz would be stupid enough to think that would work) but because hitting a city block at night was pushing the accuracy of the time, and RAF Bomber Command just couldn't take the losses that unescorted (until the later models of American fighters got into service, fighters simply couldn't fly far enough) bombers would suffer by daylight. The ONLY goal was still to break the back of the industry, in this case by destroying or driving away the workforce.


EDIT: Nagasaki was one of Japan's biggest industrial centers, and Hiroshima was a major military base. Both were vital military targets.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

How about the firebombing of Tokyo? Even in the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, so much of both cities were destroyed it's hard to argue that the only targets were military installations (well, in the case of Hamburg you could probably make that argument but the effect was the same.) Also, really? "Destroying the workforce" Pretty innocent terms for absolute slaughter, and as for the atomic bombings... They can be described as nothing less than horrific in nature. So I disagree with you sir, and say instead that while military-industrial installations may have been the nominal targets the true aim was to convince the opposing leaders that further resistance was futile.

EDIT:Hamburg less so, it was a very real target, but I included to highlight how horrific bombing COULD be.

[Lord Shonus]

How about the firebombing of Tokyo? Even in the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, so much of both cities were destroyed it's hard to argue that the only targets were military installations (well, in the case of Hamburg you could probably make that argument but the effect was the same.) Also, really? "Destroying the workforce" Pretty innocent terms for absolute slaughter, and as for the atomic bombings... They can be described as nothing less than horrific in nature. So I disagree with you sir, and say instead that while military-industrial installations may have been the nominal targets the true aim was to convince the opposing leaders that further resistance was futile.

EDIT:Hamburg less so, it was a very real target, but I included to highlight how horrific bombing COULD be.

Every single residence in Tokyo was a factory. Japan couldn't industrialize fast enough to get where the ruling regime wanted, so they decentralized their production enormously. The only way to dent the production of a Japanese city was to destroy the city - note that the USAAF tried to use the same "precision" attacks in the early stages of the attacks on Japan, and only switched to firebombing because those attacks did absolutely nothing. The target was production, and production alone.

[mainiac]

For what it's worth the allies did drop leaflets saying they would be hitting the cities so get out of town.  Admittedly that wasn't an option for nearly all residents, but they wouldn't go dropping those leaflets if their intention was to kill as many civilians as possible.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

How about the firebombing of Tokyo? Even in the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, so much of both cities were destroyed it's hard to argue that the only targets were military installations (well, in the case of Hamburg you could probably make that argument but the effect was the same.) Also, really? "Destroying the workforce" Pretty innocent terms for absolute slaughter, and as for the atomic bombings... They can be described as nothing less than horrific in nature. So I disagree with you sir, and say instead that while military-industrial installations may have been the nominal targets the true aim was to convince the opposing leaders that further resistance was futile.

EDIT:Hamburg less so, it was a very real target, but I included to highlight how horrific bombing COULD be.

Every single residence in Tokyo was a factory. Japan couldn't industrialize fast enough to get where the ruling regime wanted, so they decentralized their production enormously. The only way to dent the production of a Japanese city was to destroy the city - note that the USAAF tried to use the same "precision" attacks in the early stages of the attacks on Japan, and only switched to firebombing because those attacks did absolutely nothing. The target was production, and production alone.

For what it's worth the allies did drop leaflets saying they would be hitting the cities so get out of town.  Admittedly that wasn't an option for nearly all residents, but they wouldn't go dropping those leaflets if their intention was to kill as many civilians as possible.

Sure and sure on both accounts, but can you really argue that the policy of total war is one aimed only at destroying the enemies capacity to produce? It is, at least by wayward means, aimed more-or-less directly at demoralizing an enemy so badly that they can no longer fight. I mean really, neither justifying the slaughter of civilians as the means of production nor the act of telling someone you are about to kill them really excuses you from the fact that you are, in the end, targeting "innocents." I mean, MOST jobs for EVERY country during WWII were a part of their respective war economies. How would you feel if  the city of New York was quite literally just gone? Oh, it was a military target. So no worries, right? All i'm saying is that that's very black-and-white thinking.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

You're not saying the people killed in factories were more innocent than the people drafted or conscripted into the military are you?

[EnigmaticHat]

-snip-

Here's where you're wrong. Terror bombing was almost entirely a myth - not a single bomb was dropped by an Allied bomber (and few if any from an Axis one) with the intention of causing victory through panic. Every single one was aimed at a factory, a military target, or a transportation network. Dresden was not only one of the key remaining industrial centers, it was THE supply and transit nexus for the forces defending the Soviet invasion route, and it was obliterated in an attempt to "plow the road" for the Soviets. The reason Japan's cities were firebombed (instead of the precision-for-the-era raids the US tried so hard to pull off in Europe) was because every Japanese home contained some sort of machine tool, and such decentralized production made up the majority of the Japanese industry. Similarly, Britain resorted to area firebombing not out of any attempt to break the enemy morale (nobody who lived through the Blitz would be stupid enough to think that would work) but because hitting a city block at night was pushing the accuracy of the time, and RAF Bomber Command just couldn't take the losses that unescorted (until the later models of American fighters got into service, fighters simply couldn't fly far enough) bombers would suffer by daylight. The ONLY goal was still to break the back of the industry, in this case by destroying or driving away the workforce.

EDIT: Nagasaki was one of Japan's biggest industrial centers, and Hiroshima was a major military base. Both were vital military targets.

Eh... while I acknowledge that the situation is complicated and all that... every single source I can find on this by a cursory Googling suggests that the firebombs were aimed at high density civilian areas.  Everything I have ever heard about the war has supported this.  As to the fact that people had machine parts in their homes... so what?  Would the victory gardens have been a valid reason for someone to start carpet bombing our cities?*

Anyway, the reason firebombs weren't employed on Europe wasn't because WWII US generals were trying oh-so-hard to avoid civilian casualties.  Its because they wouldn't have worked.  Japanese cities were horribly vulnerable to fires.  German cities were not.

Also, you seem pretty confident about the intentions of generals behind closed doors.

*this is a hypothetical situation to prove a point, not something I believe could have plausibly happened

[Urist McScoopbeard]

You're not saying the people killed in factories were more innocent than the people drafted or conscripted into the military are you?

No, but they are by-and-by, defenseless in a way that those drafted and conscripted are not. Also, you don't really expect to get killed in a factory like you do in the military.

[Rolan7]

Just because you can't bomb the industrial complex without killing civilians, doesn't mean you're targeting civilians.  And, in a way, it does excuse it.  It's their government's fault for forcing the situation. 

It's something to take into account: "maybe we shouldn't bomb here because there are a lot of noncombatants", but that's completely different from targeting civilians.  AFAIK, only the Third Reich did that.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

You're not saying the people killed in factories were more innocent than the people drafted or conscripted into the military are you?

No, but they are by-and-by, defenseless in a way that those drafted and conscripted are not. Also, you don't really expect to get killed in a factory like you do in the military.

Well I mean look at any war. You kinda should expect to be a target if your producing machines of war. One of the most effective ways to win a war is either destroying your enemy's production capability or throwing their moral so low that they quit. So when you've got the families of your military popping out machines for the military your kinda asking the enemy for it.
Not saying it's right to kill civilians but in my mind I don't find it much different killing a drafted soilder who doesn't want to be part of the war in the first place and killing a worker in a factory, neither of them (presumably) want anything to do with the war but neither of them have any power of stopping what's happening

[Urist McScoopbeard]

You're not saying the people killed in factories were more innocent than the people drafted or conscripted into the military are you?

No, but they are by-and-by, defenseless in a way that those drafted and conscripted are not. Also, you don't really expect to get killed in a factory like you do in the military.

Well I mean look at any war. You kinda should expect to be a target if your producing machines of war. One of the most effective ways to win a war is either destroying your enemy's production capability or throwing their moral so low that they quit. So when you've got the families of your military popping out machines for the military your kinda asking the enemy for it.
Not saying it's right to kill civilians but in my mind I don't find it much different killing a drafted soilder who doesn't want to be part of the war in the first place and killing a worker in a factory, neither of them (presumably) want anything to do with the war but neither of them have any power of stopping what's happening

and THAT is why german tanks are better.